Crush Read Free Page A

like a rough cloth. Her face wasn’t ugly, but it wasn’t pretty, either. It was just plain. Jonathan quickly looked away when he noticed her looking at him. She was even smiling, like they shared the same joke, like she’d seen his thoughts and found the idea of their teacher farting through the room and growing smaller as funny as Jonathan did.
    He looked at his notepad, and the first thing he saw was the line Evil tastes like candy . He took his pen and scribbled it out.
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    As expected, he made it halfway to his history class before the Roid Patrol locked their sights on him. He didn’t see them coming up from behind, but suddenly he was thrown off balance, his feet lifted off the ground. He hit the wall of lockers hard, causing the dangling combination locks toclatter like applause. His books slid along the floor, and he barely kept his face from joining them. But he’d learned to recover quickly from such attacks. He looked around at the smiling faces passing him in the hall, wondering how many people had seen this latest humiliation ( Not Emma, he thought. Please not Emma ). Then he stopped looking, realizing it didn’t matter if she was an eyewitness to the event. Everyone in school already knew Jonathan was the Roid Patrol’s tackling dummy.
    â€œNice!” Toby Skabich said with a throaty laugh. He whipped his hand in the air to high-five Merle Atkins (whom everybody called “Ox”). Next to them Cade Cason was doubled over with laughter. They celebrated tossing Jonathan against the lockers as if it were some brilliant football strategy, rather than a daily occurrence that took no more thought or skill than crushing an empty soda can.
    Jonathan said nothing. What was the point? He couldn’t take them in a fight. No way. Even one on one, he probably couldn’t have done much more than land a lucky punch (maybe on Toby…no way on Ox or Cade).
    Jonathan was built small. Not only was he shorter than most of the other juniors, he wasslender. His arms were like twigs, and there didn’t seem to be much he could do about it. He’d spent an entire summer going to the YMCA to lift weights, and at home he chugged protein shakes—anything he thought might add some bulk to him—but he was still “Little Jonathan,” hardly any different than he’d been in junior high school. His mother told him it was the way God made him and he might as well get used to it. So he avoided confrontations with the Roid Patrol, kept his mouth shut. He might be able to get away with throwing lip at Mr. Weaver (because teachers couldn’t really do anything), but the Roid Patrol could hurt him, and they would if he gave them a reason to.
    Still laughing and clapping each other on the back, Toby, Ox, and Cade turned into a classroom at the end of the hall. Jonathan knelt down to get his books as other kids pushed past him, eyeing him and smiling, knowing what had occurred whether they had seen it or not.
    â€œJerks,” Jonathan muttered, addressing all of the students, not just the Roid Patrol. Only a handful of kids at Westland High were even remotely cool to him. They nodded to him in the hall, exchangedsmart-ass remarks with him in classes. Like the occasional greeting from Emma O’Neil, these interactions were too brief and led to no close friendships. Fact was, he was on his own. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t like any of the cliques handed out a checklist, telling you why they hated you. His friend David, who unfortunately had been transferred to the “gifted program” at Melling High last year, said it was because Jonathan didn’t “try” to fit in. So the kids didn’t know what to do with him.
    â€œYou’re not weird enough to be a geek. Not big enough to be a jock. You’re too smart to be a burner. With the way you dress, you’ll never join the FBI” (a David-created acronym standing for Fashion Before